family photos update

so i took my sisters family photos over the weekend as a favor and also so i can get practice on people other than my kids. while I'm very pleased at how they turned out, i can't seem to understand why they aren't tack sharp. or maybe i'm just being picky after seeing photos from a medium format camera and how crisp photos can be. does this photo look blurry? my sister wants to use it for her christmas card but i am concerned it may come out blurry when printed. i took the photo at ISO 320, f/5, 1/160 ... with my 50mm pancake lens and i was standing probably 8-10 feet from them. thanks for the feedback!

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I see a lot of relatively fine detail in the shot. Wow, what a fine-looking hubby and bunch of children your sister has!

How much Unsharp Masking did you apply to it? For printing, it should probably be sharpened much more aggressively, with an on-screen look at full-size that is almost "crunchy". I mean something like a USM of 100 percent at 1.1 pixel radius and a threshold of about 4 to 10. Should make a great print file.

It looks plenty sharp for a Christmas card. Looking at it very closely, it looks like the absolute sharpest, clearest focus "might be" about one foot in front of them...looking at the concrete's detail, it looks like the concrete about 10 inches to a foot in front of their shoes is just ever-so slightly sharper than the outer soles of their shoes....however at a SMALL display size, this focus will look fine. Luckily, the depth of field is adequate for an acceptably sharp image.

ok thank you so much for the feedback. what exactly do you mean by "how much unsharp masking did i apply? she will be printing it at tiny prints in 5X7 size. how should i sharpen it? by using the high pass function?

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I don't use High Pass sharpening for printing, and can't offer any suggestions on that. I do not know what software you have available, but I would just use basic Unsharp Mask in Photoshop, or in Lightroom, export it at 300 or 360 dpi, at about 3,000 pixels wide or so, and set it to PRINT, for Glossy Paper, and to the HARD sharpening option. It's a Christmas card...it'll be fine no matter what you do to it. It'll be printed up as a small image, so it ought to look just fine.

I could not turn on the focus area indicator, so I'm merely guessing: Your camera may have focused on the backdrop instead of anybody's face. If you have a software that can show you where the focus was, go there and see exactly where the area of focus is.

Aside from that, I don't understand why you would pose them in front of a wall like that. I mean; if this was going to be a Christmas card, then why not pose them in front of something "Christmassy"?

i still have the photo on my camera so i checked where the red dot was and you're right, it is on the wall above the youngest boys head! UGHHHHHHHH my sister is going to be really bummed when i tell her that is too fuzzy to use for photos. and BTW they picked this back drop- they loved the distressed, colored wall- as do i! looks soooo great with all their colors!!

Even if the focus was slightly off there isn't that much distance between them and the background (they seem to be fairly close to the wall) so it doesn't seem like it's too noticeable. Did you try printing one to look at? not necessarily a card just a print that size. It might be fine for a Christmas card.